Currently, the technique of spatial multiplexing is utilized to improve performance for various types of communication systems. Spatial multiplexing employs multiple transmit antennas and multiple receive antennas to improve communication performance. In particular, it allows for independent and separately encoded signals to be transmitted from each of the transmit antennas.
After the signals are received by the receive antennas, various types of detectors may be used to detect the signals. Two types of detectors that are frequently used in industry are a minimum mean square error (MMSE) detector and a sphere detector. When the signals are highly correlated, a sphere detector will provide for a better bit error rate (BER) than an MMSE detector. However, sphere detectors require more calculations, more calculation time, and more power to perform detection than MMSE detectors. As such, when the signals are highly correlated, and there is no desire for conserving power, detection with sphere detectors is preferred. Therefore, there is a need for a system and method that allow for the switching between detection with a MMSE detector and detection with a sphere detector depending upon the amount of correlation of the signals.